What attracted you to the IHSA Conferences? As a young academic, I felt the need to start attending academic conferences and have my voice heard. This was naturally coupled with the support of my friends and colleagues at NUIG.

Best memory of the conferences? Giving my first academic paper at a great IHSA in Galway 2012.

What are you looking forward to most about Galway 2016? I won’t be involved in the academic aspect when the Galway conference rolls round, so I’m looking forward to sitting back and listening and meeting people there!

Robert Rock (his paper on Witchcraft to be more specific 🙂 ) and the opportunity to network.

Best memory of the conferences?

I made a joke about the amount of pigeons at one point during Prof. Sean Connolly’s Walking History Tour of Belfast (resembling a scene from ‘Home Alone’). Cara Hanley laughed; we got talking and found out we had the same supervisor. Friend made for life!

Worst memory of the conferences?

I’ve had no bad memories or experiences with IHSA conferences. That having been said, I did learn the hard way that it’s notan absolute requirement to bring your own wine, in a plastic water bottle and refill your glass under the table during the conference dinner…

Ceol agus Craic! I expect to be ‘Takin’ a whirl, ‘Round the Salthill Prom, with a Galway Guy!’ But seriously, I’m really looking forward to IHSA 2016 because I couldn’t attend last year and heard that I missed some awesome papers, like Aaron O Maonaigh’s on the Thompson Sub-machine Gun. I can’t wait to see my old buddies and make new ones, like every year. I’m also really looking forward to giving my first IHSA paper!

Anything else you’d like to add? The atmosphere of an IHSA conference in my experience has always been welcoming and friendly to speakers and listeners alike, I’d heartily recommend it to any student.

Do you remember that song from the 1965, ‘California Dreamin [on a Winter’s Day]’, by The Mama’s & The Papas? It was a great hit at the time and has shown true resilience over the intervening decades. As a matter of fact I had started to write this entry in a very different fashion and he lyric entered my head and I had to listen to it….and then the entire timbre of the article changed before my eyes! Anyway I digress, but seriously, please take a listen to some great 60’s counter-culture! California Dreamin. I have a link and although tentative, I think its relevant.

As a PhD student (final year, thank the gods!), take it from me; money does not fall from the sky like autumnal leaves. Even as the aforementioned song describes “All the leaves are brown/And the Sky is grey”, one must marvel at the metaphorical sight of all those fivers and tenners slowly spiralling down to form a blanket on the ground. Wouldn’t it be a great thing, if the simple things in life were, if not free, then at least valued and funded appropriately?

As a conference organiser seeking funding, I can tell you money does most definitely not fall in such a fashion! But yet again at CAO time we have a talking head pop up to tell us about this great knowledge economy we have here and how our third level institutions are so well funded, etc, etc. We as anyone in academia knows, they’re not. I heard from a colleague a few years back that a leading Irish Third Level department had to sell some of their PHOTOCOPIERS to make ends meet after a budgetary shortfall.

The Royal Irish Academy (hat tip for kudos), have come out with a sensible position/advice paper aimed toward central government and perhaps as a broader conversation starter also in the Irish Third Level sector regarding not just the perennially raw topic of funding, but also the more pressing topic of student funding. We all remember the terrible hardship caused in 2012/2013/2014 by the disastrous SUSI website for online grants “processing.” Part-time (and personally I have MASSIVE issues with that misleading and pejorative term) students are being persecuted by the Irish education system and successive administrations for not being good little drones and entering into courses in the desire full-time fashion with other Secondary School graduates.

Professor Daly (to the right of An tUachtarán, Michael D. Higgins). http://www.ul.ie

Grants are being withheld from people who, lets face it here, are trying to better themselves. Professor Mary Daly succinctly presents the case of the

“…bank official working full-time on €25,000 a year is being charged fees to study in the evenings, while the child of the bank’s CEO is entitled to the free fees scheme to study during the day?”

University rankings. Generally speaking, those who excel are those with greater funding. Irish Independent

Now in ‘post-crisis’ Ireland (another massive bone of contention btw), with everything rising but the dead, students are faced with increased accommodation costs, not only in Dublin, but also throughout the country as a whole. So people will just commute from home or a cheaper place to live? Also on the rise is petrol/diesel, parking, public transportation fares. Fees are also continually and incrementally rising, with increases being used to offset declining central government funding. Those claiming that grants are quite generous are living in cloud cuckoo land; wages rose during the Great War also, but inflation effectively destroyed those paltry increases! Free Education, isn’t, basically.

There’s a massive disconnect between what the government want (and not just this one wither, in case I’m accused of Fine Gael/Labour bashing…though Ruairí Quinn, the former ‘Hypocrite-in-Chief’, did their credibility few favours) and what they’re willing to invest in. Perhaps as the RIA suggests a new model of student support should be entered into? I’m not blind to the needs of universities or IT’s to investment and upgrading of facilities and infrastructure, but something has to give here; many have an aging (and expensive) building stock, which were expanded during the 1960’s and 70’s and need modernising. And its probably going to be parents and students who will have to give in. A model which is used at the national and international level might be worth considering; a bond issue. If colleges were to issue a long term bond, which would accrue with profits generated over a thirty year period, it might provide for some financial stability and guaranteed income. Some profits from these campus based start-ups and spin-offs we hear so much about, could be channelled into this area, etc.

Taking (and breaking) the Pledge

As a conclusion, we as a Third Level community must acknowledge that the system is at present not effective. it is creaking along and certainly not operating at the peak efficiency, which is desired. Unfortunately, one must wait and see are there any in the sector, especially the national parliament, who posses the ability to engineer and herald such dramatic and much needed change.